Posted on 07/21/2017 12:37:12 AM PDT by advance_copy
To the King's most excellent Majesty.
The Humble Address, Petition, and Remonstrance of the Lord Mayor, Alderman, and Livery of the City of London in Common Hall Assembled.
Most Gracious Sovereign,
We Your Majesty’s dutiful and loyal subjects the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Livery of the city of London beg leave to approach the Throne; and to declare our abhorrence of the measures which have been pursued and are now pursuing to the oppression of our fellow subjects in America. These measures are but with all the consequences which can alarm a free and commercial people, -- a deep, and perhaps fatal wound to commerce, the ruin of manufactures, the diminution of the revenue, and consequent increase of taxes, the alienation of the colonies, and the blood of your Majesty’s subjects.
But your petitioners look with less horror at the consequences, than at the purpose of these measures; not deceived by specious artifice of calling despotism, dignity -- they plainly perceive, that the real purpose is, to establish arbitrary power over all America.
Your petitioners conceive the liberties of the whole to be inevitably connected with those of every part of an empire, founded in the common rights of mankind; they cannot therefore observe, without the greatest concern and alarm, the constitution fundamentally violated, in any part of your Majesty’s dominions. They esteem it to be an essential unalterable principle of Liberty, the source and security of all constitutional rights--that no part of the dominion can be taxed without being represented. Upon this great leading principle, they most ardently wish to see their fellow subjects in America, featured in what their humble petition to your Majesty prays for--"Peace, liberty and safety".
Subordinate in commerce under which the Colonies have always cheerfully acquiesced is, they conceive, all that this country ought in justice to require. From this subordination such advantages flow, by all profits of their commerce centering here, as fully compensates this nation for the expense we incur, to which they also contribute in men and money, for the defense and protection, during a general war; and in their provincial wars they have manifested their readiness and resolution to defend themselves. To require more of them would, for this reason, derogate from the justice and magnanimity, which have been hitherto the pride and character of this country.
It is, therefore, with the deepest concern, that we have seen the sacred security of representation in their assemblies, wrested from them; the trial by jury abolished; the odious powers of excise extend to all the cases of revenue; the sanctuary of their houses laid open to violation, at the will and pleasure of every officer and servant of the customs; the dispensation of justice corrupted, by rendering their judges dependent for the seats and salaries on the will of the crown; liberty and life rendered precarious, by subjecting them to be dragged over the ocean, and tried for treason or felony here, where the distance making it impossible for the most guiltless to maintain his innocence, must deliver him up a victim to ministerial vengeance; solders and others in America, have been instigated to shed the blood of the people, by establishing the mode of trial which holds out impunity for such murder; the capital of New-England has been punished with unexampled rigor, untried and unheard, involving the innocent and suspected in one common and inhuman calamity; charted rights have been taken away without any forfeitures proved, in order to deprive the people of every legal exertion against the tyranny of their rulers; the Habeas Corpus act and trial by jury have been suppressed, the French despotic government, with the Roman Catholic religion, have been established by law over an extensive part of your Majesty’s dominions in America; dutiful petitions for redress of these grievances from all your Majesty’s American subjects, have been fruitless. To fill up the measure of these oppressions, an army has been sent over to enforce them.
Superadded to this, measures are now planned upon the merciless policy of starving our fellow subjects into a total surrender of their liberties, and an unlimited submission to arbitrary government.
These grievances have driven your Majesty’s faithful subjects to despair, and obliged them to have recourse to that resistance, which is justified by which, at the glorious period of the revolution, our ancestors transferred the Imperial Crown of these realms from the Popish and tyrannical race of the Stuarts, to the illustrious and Protestant house of Brunswick.
Your petitions are persuaded that these measures originate in the secret advice of men, who are enemies equally to your Majesty’s title and the liberties of your people. That your Majesty’s Ministers carry them into execution by the same wicked and fatal corruption, which has enabled them to wound the peace and violate the constitution of this country. This poisoning the fountain of public security, and rendering that body which should be the guardian of liberty, a formidable instrument of arbitrary power.
Your petitioners do therefore most earnestly beseech your Majesty to dismiss immediately, and forever, from your Councils, these ministers and advisers, as the first step towards a full redress of those grievances which alarm and afflict your people.
So shall peace and commerce be restored, and the confidence and affection of all your Majesty’s subjects be the solid supporters of your throne.
Me if I lived back then: Hey King, go back to Germany you swine!!!
Bfl
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